Wizard Leveling Build

The purpose of this build is to blow through most of Normal and the beginning of Nightmare difficulty. Most of it is unlocked in the late teens but some of the skills are not completely unlocked until level 30 when you enter Act IV of Normal difficulty. The build’s primary focus is doing careless damage. I recommend you equip the highest level Amethyst you can find in your bow, for health regen, and follow my Power Leveling Tips Guide.

I also stack + Experience and put a Ruby in my helmet to increase total XP gained as I progress. This will keep you several levels ahead where you would be otherwise which will improve your stats and give you access to more gear off the auction house. I try to keep my 1-Handed Wand and Offhand Magic Source of high quality.

Magic Missile is the signature spell. I don’t use Prodigy so I might be casting this more often than others. I’ve got the damage of this spell buffed with Charged Blast so that it can one-shot trash enemies or anything with low life.

I do most of my damage with Arcane Orb. Despite the high Arcane Power cost (counter this with +Arcane Power on Crit gear) this spell does a lot of damage when placed in a group of enemies properly. I usually run into a group with Frost Nova and then cast a few Arcane Orbs to weaken the group and then finish them off with Wave of Force. Arcane Orb is runed with Obliterate to increase it’s effectiveness.

Frost Nova is used to freeze enemies in place so that they are that much easier to hit with orbs. Cold Snap reduces the cool down so that I can use this more often.

Wave of Force is used to weaken enemies or finish them off after I’ve thrown out a couple Arcane Orbs. With proper gear this will one-shot big groups of white enemies. First drop a Frost Nova, then wait for the rest to group around and then use Wave of Force to get a Massacre XP Bonus. I runed Wave of Force with Force Affinity to reduce its cool down and Arcane Power cost.

Familiar with Sparkflint offers a 12% damage buff. I like damage increases since I am trying to be able to one shot as many things as possible with Wave of Force and Magic Missile. Magic Weapon has the same exact purpose except it is harder to remember to keep up since there is no visual queue that it’s active.

Passives: Glass Cannon is a straight up damage buff while Astral Presence and Power Hungry make sure that I have the Arcane Power I need to take advantage of my high damage.

Considering I used this with decent gear the addional +12%, +10% and +15% damage help a lot. For bosses you can swap out Arcane Orb for Ray of Frost and Power Hungry for Cold Blooded. This will increase your Ray of Frost damage another 20% which will destroy whatever boss you’re facing.

The key part of this build is that it’s used while you can still afford to take damage early in the game. It’s also important you use the Templar for heals and have an Amethyst in your weapon for even more heals. +Experience and +Arcane Power on crit are extremely helpful for this build.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.

It’s probably based more on my personal way of playing, but I’d recommend Shock Pulse with Explosive bolts as a signature spell. single-targetting gets frustrating for me when there are more than a dozen monsters, and you realize the goblin you’ve been clicking on hasn’t moved recently because he’s been dead a while.

It’s not easy to aim shock Pulse with any precision, and it doesn’t do as much damage as magic missile, but with 2 shots, nearly any non-elite on that side of me is dead. Aim isn’t important, and I like having almost every spell acting as an AoE. The precision is almost never an issue.

Because I’m AoEing trash with my signature spells, the others are primarily needed for elites. I had been using arcane orbs, but I’m now playing with ray of frost runed with snow blast to turn arcane power into single-target damage.

I’m also using teleport, familiar, and hydra, and plan to try and use magic weapon instead of storm armor, because almost no one gets close enough to hit me.

With shock pulse and teleport on my mouse buttons, I spend long periods not toughing my keyboard.

I’m also using the same passives as you, but at lvl 28, I plan to try out ray of frost with cold blooded, which uses 0 arcane power. If that works, all of my in-combat spells will be power-free, hopefully letting me free up two passives for other uses.

I hope my comments don’t come across as criticism. I find your articles very useful and enjoyable.

When using the arcane hydra glyph plus the glyph for arcane barrage or torrent or w/e it is that makes enemies susceptible to arcane damage combined will nuke them to all hell. Azmodan went down in >30 seconds because of that, nuked till AP was low then archon’d and beamed him and he was toast. Works wonders on bosses.